Moving house is seldom a stress-free experience – particularly for young people, who can feel disempowered by being relocated by their parents. The angst and woe of the protagonist of Mari Kanstad Johnson’s award-winning wordless picturebook is vividly represented in a bold and eccentric style. The depiction of the stress of moving house begins with the endpapers, which show the protagonist saying goodbye to her friends and leaning mournfully out the car window as her parents drive her away from home. She is bullied in her new school and lonely in her new home, until one night she follows a strange white light across the lake by the new house and discovers a mysterious island full of friendly glowing rabbits. She wins friends at her new school by smuggling one of the magical rabbits into her school bag, but it isn’t long before she does the right thing and returns the rabbit to its home. Will she still be accepted at the school without the rabbit? This intriguing story is a poetic visual representation of the struggles of loneliness and relocation, with great potential to lead a wide-ranging classroom discussion
